A man who used to work for the BBC and is now an expert on abusive crime, said the way he was dealt with by the BBC was “tantamount to abuse, almost, but not quite as bad.” The row started after a Daily Mail article he wrote for money, that hinted he himself was both an expert and a victim of abuse. He said the abuse came in the shape of being fired by the BBC after he was found not to be attractive any more by focus groups of women. He went on to say that he was never asked whether he wanted to say “yes or no” to being fired abusively in this way, and while it was heppening "he knew what was going on but felt powerless to stop it." He says there are levels of seriousness in matters of this kind. It's not all black and white.

In the article he writes “It’s never that clear cut. Events can happen in the heat of the moment and after drinking too much you find you’re asking for it. You want it. By which I mean you are gagging for your new controversial book to be serialised in the Mail. And when you wake up the next morning, you can’t remember whether in the heat of the moment you’ve well, prostituted yourself or not. So it’s not straightforward abuse, there are subtleties, gradations, Fifty Shades of Gray. Please don’t put that last bit in, it was a joke made in the heat of the moment.”

“Look,” the man continued. “the real experts on crime, apart from the criminals, are the ones who used to work on Crimewatch then got fired, without a hint of suggestion that they’d done anything wrong in the seventies and eighties like some I could mention. The only thing these victims did wrong in the seventies and eighties was to be in their twenties and yes, thirties. Do the maths.”

It was first thought the man who made the controversial comments could not be identified for legal reasons. It has since emerged that despite the controversy, the reason his identity cannot be revealed is that nobody quite remembers who he is. A BBC Spokesman said “We take all these kinds of allegations seriously. Except this one.”